Halo 5 Questions Answered By 343 Industries Studio Head Josh Holmes

A fan asked whether it would be possible to allow users to ‘maintain weapon (and grenade) control during sprint, but with no or extremely limited aim assist’, to which Holmes replied that the idea would take a lot of tweaking and balancing to implement into the game.

This idea is interesting but it would take a ton of tuning and balancing to make it work. It’s definitely not something that could be implemented for Halo 5 (even if we wanted to). One downside to this approach is that it softens the tradeoff for sprinting and makes the direct impact of that tradeoff (inability to shoot accurately) less clear. We would need to invest a lot of time in refining the player feedback (through the HUD, audio) to ensure that all players understand what is happening when their accuracy drops substantially. If done poorly, this would feel random to players who don’t have the benefit of understanding what is happening behind the scenes. In general we have found (through substantial testing and player feedback) that analog relationships between different game states are very challenging to communicate and often lead to player confusion (and therefore frustration).

Holmes continued regarding maintaining weapon and grenade control while operating thruster pack.

Similar feedback to the idea above. We’ve focused instead on tuning the window between initiation of the thrust and ability to shoot (for the thrusting player) so that there is enough “tell” without feeling sluggish. This has continued to be refined since beta and feels much snappier.

Some notable points were, firstly ‘the sub-optimal visibility when using the ability on the beta’s precision weapons, to which Holmes replied

This has been improved since beta. All weapons have gone through substantial tuning as a result of feedback and data.

And some balancing tweaks for the AR/Magnum and the Magnum, to which Holmes replied with

We are currently focused on AR/Magnum and the Magnum has been buffed considerably. IMO this is the best the Magnum has felt in Halo since at least CE (if not ever).

Halo 5: Guardians will surely have a strong presence at E3 2015 as it has already been confirmed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer. Microsoft promises that E3 will give players the chance “see the greatest games lineup in Xbox history”.

Microsoft’s E3 press conference gets underway at 5:30pm on June 15, with the show beginning one day later on June 16.

Halo 5: Guardians is being released on October 27 2015 for the Xbox One. We will bring you any new information as soon as it becomes available. Be sure to check our previous coverage for more information here and here.